Prioritising security vulnerabilities in ports

Ports are exposed to various risks in their internal operations and external interactions with inland transport carriers and sea-going vessels within maritime logistics systems. While conventional safety management techniques may be capable of dealing with accidental, hazard-based risks in port, new vulnerability analysis methods are urgently required for tackling those caused by threats such as terrorist attacks. The motivation for identifying the vulnerabilities is the need for prioritising activities and resources on port security investments and risk reduction processes. This paper develops an advanced threat-based criticality analysis methodology designed for the identification and prioritisation of vulnerable port facilities under uncertainties. The model relies on the combination of fuzzy Bayesian reasoning and analytical hierarchy process (AHP) analysis in a complementary way so as to facilitate the treatment of uncertainty in data, thus realising effective quantitative analysis of the vulnerabilities under different threat modes in ports. The outcomes can be used either as a stand-alone technique for prioritising critical systems such as port facilitates with high values and significant functions or as part of an integrated decision making method for evaluating the effectiveness of security control options.